Kum & Go

Kum & Go, L.C.

Type	Private
Industry	Retail (Convenience stores)
Founded	Hampton, Iowa (1959)
Headquarters	West Des Moines, Iowa
Key people	William Krause and Tony Gentle, Co-founders Kyle Krause, CEO
Revenue	$2.10 billion (2011)
Number of employees	3,942
Website	www.kumandgo.com

Kum & Go is a convenience store chain primarily located in the Midwestern United States. The company, based in West Des Moines, Iowa, operates over 400 stores in 11 states—primarily in its home state of Iowa. Kum & Go was ranked as the 23rd-largest convenience store chain in the United States by Convenience Store News in 2010.

The chain was founded by William A. Krause and Tony S. Gentle, who founded the Hampton Oil Company in Hampton, Iowa, in 1959. Hampton Oil eventually became the Krause Gentle Corporation, which is Kum & Go's parent company. In 1963, Krause Gentle introduced the company's first convenience stores, selling both fuel and merchandise items, in which they changed their gas station into a "station store".

The Kum & Go name was adopted in 1975 to unify the company's array of stores under a single brand. It was a play on the phrase "come and go" using the initials of founders Krause and Gentle. Sales of Kum & Go-branded merchandise increased after Johnny Knoxville was seen wearing a Kum & Go T-shirt during a scene in the 2006 movie Jackass Number Two.

Part of the Kum & Go franchise success was due in part to a unique marketing campaign in which they featured the Kum & Go "Gold cup". The cup was introduced in late 2008 for the holiday season. It featured an 8oz coffee mug for $50.00 and benefitted customers by offering unlimited coffee and soda fountain refills for 2009 at any Kum & Go location.

In 1988, Krause Gentle moved the company's corporate headquarters to its current location in West Des Moines, Iowa. William Krause's son Kyle is the current CEO of Krause Gentle. Kum & Go went through a period of rapid expansion in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to building new stores, Krause Gentle acquired unwanted stores from chains such as 7-Eleven, QuikTrip, and Git 'n' Go and converted them to Kum & Go stores. In 2007 and 2008 Kum & Go auctioned off more than 40 of its smaller stores in order to focus on building larger stores ranging in size from 3,600 to 5,000 square feet (460 m²). It was announced in June, 2011, that Kum & Go had reached agreement to sell twenty-two stores, again mostly in smaller rural communities, to rival Casey's General Stores. According to Kum & Go CEO Kyle J. Krause the sale will allow reinvestment in the chains remaining stores and help drive their long-term growth.